Mt. Juliet Voted, and Mt. Juliet Won: Inside the 2026 Main Street Awards
Every town has an unofficial ranking of its own businesses. It lives in group texts, in the answer you give a new neighbor who asks where to eat, in whose waiting room you'd actually sit in. The Mt. Juliet Main Street Awards are the annual attempt to write that ranking down.
The 2026 edition was decided by resident voting and handed out at a ceremony on June 10. The structure is what makes it interesting: it isn't a top-ten list. It is more than 140 individual categories spread across five divisions, and each one produces exactly one winner and two finalists. That granularity is the whole point — it means a physical therapy clinic and a donut shop are judged on their own terms rather than lumped into “best business.”
How the divisions break down
- Community — 26 categories covering schools, nonprofits, churches, gyms, events and elected officials
- Flavor — 21 food and beverage categories
- Medical — 24 healthcare categories
- Retail — 30 shopping categories
- Services — more than 40 professional service categories
Add it up and it is one of the more exhaustive local awards programs anywhere in Middle Tennessee. It is also, quietly, a decent economic snapshot: a city that needs 24 separate medical categories is a city that has stopped driving to Nashville for everything.
Some of the names on the trophies
Flavor. Campione's – Mt. Juliet took Overall Restaurant, the single most contested line on the ballot. Mt. Juliet Donut Shop won Breakfast. Martin's BBQ took barbecue — no small thing in a state where that category is a blood sport.
Community. The Overall Community Event went to Live Like Ambria Day. City Commissioner Scott Hefner, who represents District 3, won Elected Official.
Medical. Revive Implant + Cosmetic Dentistry took the dental practice category, and Star Physical Therapy‘s Lebanon Road location won physical therapy.
Retail. Publix won grocery, and Two Rivers Ford took auto dealer.
Services. Re/Max Carriage House won real estate company; the Law Office of Georgina K. Hughes won attorney.
Those are highlights, not the full board — with 140-plus categories, the complete list runs considerably longer, and there are winners in it for everything from pest control to youth sports leagues.
Why an awards list is worth keeping
Mt. Juliet has added population faster than almost any city its size in Tennessee, which means a meaningful share of the people voting in these awards have lived here under five years. An awards ballot filled out by tens of thousands of neighbors is one of the few pieces of local knowledge a newcomer can actually get their hands on — a shortcut past the year or two it normally takes to learn which orthodontist people drive across town for.
It is also a reminder of how much of the city's commerce is still locally owned. The national names show up on the ballot and win their share, but the categories that draw the most passionate voting are almost always the ones with a person's name on the door.
If you're new here and working through the food half of the list, our guide to the best restaurants in Mt. Juliet covers a lot of the same ground with more detail on what to order. And for everything beyond dinner, the things-to-do guide maps out the parks, the marketplace and the rest.
Voting for the next round opens in the spring. Between now and then, the ranking goes back to living in group texts.
